


Friday

by loveanddeathandartandtaxes



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, First Kiss, First Time, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, John is not sure any more that he's not gay, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Rated for future chapters, Sherlock is not sure how to deal with feelings, vague suicide ideation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-16
Updated: 2013-06-09
Packaged: 2017-12-12 02:12:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/805944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loveanddeathandartandtaxes/pseuds/loveanddeathandartandtaxes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's Friday, I'm in love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The between-times when there were no cases to solve would never be something he looked forward to, but they had recently been more manageable than this, even without the cocaine. John was intent on making him give up smoking again, too, but would not push that issue too much until he had something else to distract him. Sherlock took another drag of his cigarette, exhaling the smoke into the air above him where he lay on the sofa.  
“Right,” John said somewhere to his left. “I’m off. Work.”  
“Boring,” he replied blandly.  
“Of course it is, Sherlock. It’s just A&E car crashes, knife wounds, protruding bones. No intrigue at all.”  
He waved a hand dismissively.  
“You’ll tell me immediately if there _are_ any truly interesting assaults?”  
“Yeah. Just… just get off the sofa at some point today. At least drink some water, if you’re not going to eat anything. And, please, _try_ to limit how many smokes you have.”  
“No.”  
John sighed as he left.

Sherlock smoked another four cigarettes within the hour, just because he could.  
He made himself count to 1000 between his fifth and sixth cigarettes. The rhythmic increase of numbers was not as soothing as the inhale-hold-exhale of smoke and nicotine, but it was something.   
He listed the elements alphabetically, before the seventh.  
After that one, he counted primes up to 1000. Well, 997. Instead of an eighth, he charted primes up to 10,000. People probably thought it significant that the number of primes under 10,000 (1229) is prime itself. Irrelevant. He graphed the occurrence of prime numbers and solved for x.

He wondered if John would be home soon. The clock indicated he had been gone five hours – at least another four until he came home. The _likelihood_ of him coming home today was… well, “sufficient” was hardly the word. Unless John took more offense than indicated from this morning’s conversation, as long as there were no patients that John perceived as particularly dangerous to his person or traumatic to his psyche, as long as no siblings demanded his time, he _should_ be home at the normal time. The variables on this were atrocious.

The wall wanted shooting again, but John kept his pistol in a safe now. He could crack the code, but he _knew_ that John would not like that at all. He would come home – if he came home – see bullet-holes in wallpaper, and leave again. Surely one day it would be too much, he would leave ‘to get some air’, stay over at Harry’s, and only return to collect his things. It was practically inevitable, but Sherlock refused to willingly devote too much of his mind considering it. John had clung onto his normal life interminably after Sherlock returned ‘from the dead’. John _liked_ normal. He craved it. One day he would leave Sherlock for normality.

Rolling over on the sofa, he stared balefully at the living room. John would take those books when he left, and that pot of pens. He blinked slowly.

 

“Sherlock?”  
Today was not the day that John left. Sherlock nearly wept in relief.  
“Nothing you’d call interesting at the A&E today, sorry. How was your day?”  
“I like that pot of pens.”  
“Oh? Oh. Good. Right. I’m glad you like it.”  
Sherlock tugged his curls as he grimaced. John didn’t understand.

 

There was no point shifting from the sofa to his bed and back to the sofa. He glared at the tea and toast John had left for him on his way to work. Such a paltry parting gift. It was unlikely he would give Sherlock anything more than that when he left for good. A sharp exhalation of smoke obscured it briefly from sight.  
Doing nothing while he waited for John to leave was stupid. On his way downstairs, he caught a whiff of himself, and cursed as he stomped back to the bathroom. Half an hour later he descended the stairs again, hailing a taxi and heading to Scotland Yard.

“Mate, I know your rules by now. I never even _try_ to get you for anything less than a ‘five’ anymore. I haven’t got any cases to interest you.” Lestrade was either ignorant or apathetic to Sherlock’s mood. Knowing him, it could be either.  
“Anything. A three.”  
“A thr– Jesus, are you okay?”  
“Don’t be stupid, Lestrade. It doesn’t suit you.”  
Greg sighed and waved over one of his team, who brought a file. Sherlock flicked through the evidence photos and interviews, the muttered insults about incompetence more habit than anything, and looked beyond both police officers.  
“Almost definitely the brother-in-law. Check that he worked in Canada in the nineties. If not, it _could_ be his partner’s girlfriend.”  
“His boyfriend has a… girlfriend?”  
“Obviously. Honestly, how do –” he cut himself short. John was going to leave him soon, and things went much smoother when someone was polite. If he was working alone, it would have to be him. He groaned.  
“Nevermind. I appreciate the momentary distraction. What else do you have?”

Being polite was _boring_. He left the Yard for Bart’s morgue.  
“Anything interesting?”  
Molly did not look up from the corpse.  
“Hello, Sherlock. _How are you, Molly?_ ” She pitched her voice down in an imitation of him. “I’m fine, how are you? _I need something to do. Do you have anything interesting?_ ”  
He glared at her until she looked at him, her grin fading immediately.  
“Oh. Well, no, sorry. Just this poor lady. She crashed her car, died on impact. Looks like it was just a heart attack, which is boring, I know.”  
“Mm.”  
“Did you need any fingers or anyth –”  
Sherlock closed the door firmly behind him as he left.

__John was surprisingly unsurprised when he came home and Sherlock was crouching in his bedroom, eyes burning holes into the small safe. John would not leave this when he moved out.  
“I didn’t know it was that bad.”  
“I could break into this.”  
“Of course you can,” John agreed wearily, rubbing his forehead. “But I like to think the time it would take you might give you time to change your mind.”  
“Boring.”  
“I know. Bangers and mash for dinner?”  
Sherlock said nothing. 

__The next day was _worse_. John did not start his shift until half two, and spent the morning pottering around the flat, tidying up. Sherlock seethed. Why didn’t John just _leave_? He was going to; why prolong this?  
“Why don’t you just _leave_ ,” he growled around a cigarette.  
“Alright, alright, I’ll leave you to your secret experiments in peace. I’ll be back tonight. There’s a microwave meal in the fridge if you want.”  
The way his head jerked obviously told John he was interested in what he had just said.  
“Just Tescos’ chicken korma.”  
“No.”  
Even John was an idiot. 

__John was an idiot, but he did keep his word. This was not the day he would leave. He came home while Sherlock was holding the gun tenderly. Thirty-nine minutes ago he had had it in his mouth, idly considering angles of trajectory. Two minutes after that, the muzzle was pressed above his ear. The potential for both the cerebellum and the frontal cortex to continue functioning – for _any_ length of time – was fascinating. It was a shame no-one had been shot while connected to an EEG. When John left he might volunteer.  
“Get out of my room. Leave the gun.”  
John was being very short with him. Maybe this was it. No; he was sick. He left the gun and went downstairs. 

__Lestrade called shortly after seven the next morning.  
“I’m not sure what you’ll rate it, but can you come?”  
“Of course. Where?”  
He took note of the address, marking it on a mental map of London.  
“John!”  
A faint moan from the bathroom reached him.  
“John?”  
“Not... not today, Sherlock.”  
It was the takeaway he’d gotten on the way home last night, probably combined with some sort of virus caught at the hospital. Nothing interesting.  
“You go. Tell me about it when - ugh - when you get back. I’ll just... stay... here.”  
John was a doctor. He could look after himself. Sherlock swept out the door. 

__

There was a murder which wasn’t _particularly_ fascinating, but after the last three days, he’d take what he could get. There was a false lead which didn’t take that long to see through, and a marvellous chase on foot after the sun set, up stairs and over roofs and down fire escapes. Sherlock threw a punch which clipped the killer behind the ear, which was enough of an advantage to give him the upper hand in the resulting tussle. It was still difficult, sometimes, to remember to only subdue his quarry, not... incapacitate. His time away was not as easily forgotten as he would like. With one foot resting lightly on the man’s back, he texted their location to Lestrade. He was happy enough with the whole situation that he agreed to accompany the Detective Inspector to the station to give his statement. 

__“Right, then. Kebab on the way home?”  
“What?”  
Lestrade sucked in a deep breath, the way he did when he expected something to go wrong. “Well, you’ve not got John to remind you today, so it’s up to me, yeah? It’s after midnight, so I know you’ve not eaten anything in at least sixteen hours. We could get a takeaway.”  
“No.”  
He turned away. _Polite_. He turned back.  
“Goodnight, Lestrade.” 

__When he let himself into 221B, the flat was quiet, as expected. John was probably sleeping on the sofa, in order to be closer to the bathroom than his bedroom was.  
He was not on the sofa. He had clearly not spent much time in the living room at all. Sherlock wondered if he perhaps hadn’t been as ill as previously thought, and had gone up to his own room. He wondered if John was worse than previously thought, and had gone somewhere else - Mrs Hudson’s, Harry’s, _Mary’s_ , Molly’s, _hospital_ \- to be looked after. Scowling, he stalked into his room and flicked the light switch, only to be greeted with a whining moan.  
“John?”  
The doctor inhaled like it hurt - strained rectus abdominis from vomiting violently and repeatedly.  
“Turn the light off, Sherlock,” he breathed, wrinkling above and between his eyebrows.  
Sherlock turned off the light.  
“I know I said you should tell me about it when you got home, but... can you do that tomorrow? I just... I just wanna sleep some more, now.”  
“You’re in my bed.”  
“Yeah. Sorry. S’closer than mine. Nicer than the sofa.”  
“Where am I going to sleep?”  
There was a low _thump_ as John flopped an arm out to indicate the empty side of the mattress.  
“Or... or I should prob’ly go up to mine. Feeling a bit better now.” He sat up and gave a pained wheeze. “Still not great though.”  
“Idiot,” Sherlock huffed. “Lie down.” John did, shifting a little until he was comfortable again. Sherlock moved around the bed, taking off his coat, shirt, and trousers, laying them over the foot of his bed. Slipping on a pair of pyjama bottoms, he lay beside his friend, mindful to not jostle the bed too much. John shifted again, restlessly, and Sherlock’s hand settled over John’s waist; a soothing presence, perhaps. He hoped John wouldn’t leave soon. This felt nice. Sherlock thought very hard about that for a long time. 


	2. Chapter 2

The week started as many weeks did since their return to Baker St; John left for work, and Sherlock sulked on the sofa. His shift at the hospital was normal enough, swinging wildly from routine to frantic and back again.  
There was, as always, nothing in the fridge to make a proper meal with, so John picked up Chinese on the way home.  
“Sherlock?” he called as he let himself in. The detective was more or less exactly as he was this morning, other than the note paper scattered on the floor in front of him. He stared at John.  
“Nothing you’d call interesting at the A&E today, sorry.” Sherlock had practically begged - well, ordered, but John knew what he meant - to be told of any assault mysteries. “How was your day?”  
An owlish blink was his only reply for quite some time, but then the piercing gaze slid over to John’s desk.  
“I like that pot of pens.”  
 _What?_  
“Oh? Oh. Good. Right. I’m glad you like it.” He wondered how long it would be before a breaking point was reached this time. It wasn’t worth saying anything, though, so he retreated to the kitchen to serve up the takeaway. Sherlock stared mournfully at the plate when John balanced it on the sofa where he lay, eventually picking at it without interest. John had learned to eat slowly when he was like this, giving his friend plenty of time to nibble before he finished his own, took both the plates, and washed up. He checked his email and blog comments after dinner, unsure how to start conversation. Eventually it was late enough that he could excuse himself to shower and bed without feeling too much like he was running away.

Given how little Sherlock had eaten for dinner the previous night, John had no hesitations leaving him a plate of toast with his tea as he left. Tuesday’s shift was depressingly like the previous day’s, but hectic enough that there was never enough time to really consider it. Arriving home, he looked forward to another quiet night and a sleep-in the next day. Finding his flatmate peering into his bedside cabinet, considering the gun-safe, would have to do, though. He’d come home to worse.  
“I didn’t know it was that bad.”  
Sherlock acknowledged John's presence with a tuneless hum.  
“I could break into this.”  
“Of course you can.” _Please don’t. I worry about you._ “But I like to think the time it would take you might give you time to change your mind.”  
“Boring.”  
John sighed. He’d come to terms with his terror that one day Sherlock would declare _him_ boring. Coming to terms with it had not banished the paralysing fear, but it had made it significantly easier to deal with.  
“I know. Bangers and mash for dinner?”

 

It was an effort to tamp down on that terror late the next morning, when Sherlock was acting like John’s tidying was a personal insult.  
“Why don’t you just _leave_ ,” he had snarled. John absorbed the words, let them wash over him, run through him, and away. _He doesn’t mean for good_ , he told himself. _Can’t. I do need to leave to get to work soon._  
“Alright, alright, I’ll leave you to your secret experiments in peace.” He smiled conspiratorially but got no response. “I’ll be back tonight. There’s a microwave meal in the fridge if you want.”  
Sherlock’s ears practically perked up in interest, and John suppressed a chuckle.  
“Just Tesco’s chicken korma.”  
“No.”  
He rolled his eyes as his friend curled away from him, into the cushions.

Towards the end of the night, John was becoming vaguely aware of an impending cold. Swallowing some painkillers, he ignored the feeling for the rest of his shift. A burger as he walked home would suffice for dinner, as he wanted to crawl into bed as soon as he could.  
By the time he reached Baker St, he knew that had been a mistake, and dashed to the loo before he climbed the stairs to his bedroom.  
Sherlock sat cross-legged on the middle of his bed, fiddling with the gun and looking entirely unrepentant at being caught. John’s heart stuttered. The calm, contemplative way Sherlock was handling the weapon was altogether too similar to how he knew had held the gun, both times he was certain he had lost everything. He shoved that deep, refusing to let his voice waver.  
“Get out of my room. Leave the gun.”  
The detective had the gall to look disappointed in John’s reaction as he, surprisingly, obeyed.  
John locked the gun away, for what little that was worth at this point, and managed to get changed into his pyjamas, before his stomach rolled and his head swam and he had to make his way back downstairs. This was going to be a long night.  
By the time the sun rose, John had given up on shuffling all the way to his bed between trips to the loo, instead kipping as best he could on the sofa. He was leaning against the bathroom sink when Sherlock’s phone rang.  
“Of course. Where?” the other man said, and John knew Greg had a case for him. When Sherlock called for him, he looked at himself in the mirror, as if there was any doubt he would be going anywhere but back to bed.  
“Not…Not today, Sherlock,” he said, swallowing hard. There was nothing left for him to throw up, but his stomach wanted to try anyway.  
There was silence from the hallway, and John could clearly picture the face the lanky man was making.  
“You go. Tell me about it when - ugh - when you get back.” He knelt in front of the toilet again. “I’ll just... stay... here.”

The highlight of John’s day was keeping his tablets, a painfully-made cup of tea and a couple digestive biscuits down for more than an hour. Mostly he just ignored the telly and dozed. Sometime in the early afternoon he realised that he should probably try to catch some proper sleep, but the mere thought of climbing a whole flight of stairs made his head spin, and the possibility of having to race back down them horrified him. The obvious solution was to borrow Sherlock’s room. It was a logical decision, John told himself, and therefore beyond reproach of the man. He closed his eyes while he was still crawling onto the mattress, and moaned in bliss when he pulled the duvet up. Sleep did not take him immediately, but he was comfortable enough not to mind.

He woke slowly the next morning, finding himself lying on his back, leaning towards his left, where a warm weight pressed against his side and across his knee. He was about to win the scavenger hunt in his dreamscape, though, so he denied the offer of consciousness and returned to sleep. When he next surfaced, there was little surprise that it was Sherlock pressing against him, not quite embracing, but curled up towards him; his face was centimetres from John’s chest, closer than flatmates who ended up sharing a bed _really_ had any right to be. Carefully not thinking too much, John slid his hand over until it rested comfortably on Sherlock’s upper arm.  
“If you’re planning on evicting me, let me just remind you that this is, in fact, my bed,” the detective rumbled. John could feel his breath against his own skin, even through his t-shirt.  
“I wasn’t thinking that,” he said defensively, before he realised he was speaking the truth. He had been marvelling at the comfort and easy rightness, if anything. Then he thought about how sleep-roughened his voice sounded, while Sherlock’s was the pinnacle of clarity.  
“You’re feeling better.” It wasn’t a question.  
“Mm.” He rubbed his thumb gently over Sherlock’s skin.  
The detective made no move to shift away from John, let alone get out of bed, and he wondered at his friend’s unusual mood.  
“Are you... Did the case go well, then? You solved it okay?”  
“Of course.”  
“Anything for the blog?”  
“Perhaps your audience _would _find it intriguing.”__  
Sherlock abbreviated the way he solved the case, and John gave the appropriate responses at the right times.  
“I should... I should type that up.”  
“Yes.” When Sherlock sat up, got out of bed, the loss of the warm body immediately made John regret his words. _Not now_ , he wanted to say. _Let’s stay here a while longer._ But he bit back the words, warily stood - just a hint of dizziness he could write off and medicate with tea and toast - and followed Sherlock into the kitchen.  
“Tea?” he offered, but Sherlock was already setting out mugs.  
“Perhaps this time you will let me dictate to you, so that all the relevant facts are included.”  
John rolled his eyes and nodded as he chuckled.

__The rest of the day passed quickly; once John understood the details of the case and wrote a blog post that eventually withstood Sherlock’s scrutiny, they turned the telly on and laughed at that a while._ _

__“I should probably go shopping,” John mentioned while an ad for Sainsbury’s played.  
“No, stay.” Long legs swung up to lay across his lap, trapping him on the sofa.  
“Sherlock, we need food.”  
“Stay.”  
“Oh, for – I’m going to buy some food, not to bloody Siberia. I’ll come _back_.”  
Slate-blue eyes sharpened.  
“Yes?”  
“Where else would I go?”  
“Mm.”  
John made a move to get up, but Sherlock did not shift his legs. Tentatively, John rested a hand on his shin.  
“You need to move these.”  
“You’re not _leaving_. Just bringing food home.”  
“Yes, of course.” His thumb was rubbing small circles on Sherlock’s leg, he realised with a start. Seven heartbeats later, when the legs tensed to move off him, he grabbed one and held it loosely.  
“I’m not... actually, you know, in a hurry.”  
“Good.”  
In the end, it was half seven before he left to get groceries. 

____He still felt a bit run down from his bug the previous day, so took a final few tablets and excused himself to bed almost as soon as dinner was finished. He slept heavily, and when he woke, Sherlock was already up and back to normal, the fingertips-for-experiments and harpooned-pig-carcasses-for-research kind of normal that John wouldn’t trade for the world. If that were the case, given the rating of Thursday’s case (a five) he could expect the first utterance of “Bored!” any time in the next twelve hours, followed shortly by a horrific increase in the number of cigarettes smoked per hour. Damage to the flat would probably occur before the weekend was out. There were few new comments on the blog, so John spent most of the day tidying the flat, tiptoeing carefully around his flatmate, and waited for an explosion, literal or metaphorical._ _ _ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If it's not clear, this is John's version of the same week as chapter one. The remaining chapters will all cover new time.


	3. Chapter 3

Sherlock suspected that John was not fully aware of how often he noticed the doctor casting concerned glances in his direction. Not wanting to upset his friend, he carefully modulated his behaviour. Delicately removing skin from two sets of fingertips stored in the fridge projected the message _I am calm, I will not break anything, please don’t leave_. Patiently watching them steep in a slightly basic solution told John _I am content, I will not sulk, please don’t leave._ Infuriatingly, he could not think of a single way to convey what was dominating his thoughts. _Yesterday was good, I would like that all the time. Please never leave_. John would figure it out eventually. He always did. In the meantime, Sherlock would continue to determine a way to tell him. The day passed without a satisfactory solution.

As he lay in bed the following morning waiting for a John-approved time to get up, ( _I am considerate, I will not upset you, please don’t leave _) John’s phone rang from the living room, and the doctor immediately trotted down the stairs to answer it. Sherlock lay quite still and regulated his breathing to better eavesdrop from across the flat.__  
“John Watson,” he heard. It was either the hospital or a number John didn’t recognise, then.  
“I’m fine. Y-oh no. Yes, of course. No, it’s fine. Yes. Sure. I’ll see you soon.”  
When the floorboards began their tell-tale creaks, Sherlock jumped out of bed to intercept his flatmate before he reached the bathroom.  
“John.”  
“Morning, Sherlock. I’ve got to cover a shift today. I’ll be off as soon as I’ve showered.”  
“You were supposed to stay at home, today.” Sherlock knew that: it was not a deduction. He knew John knew it too. He wondered briefly what message stating a known fact sent to John. _You make me stupid and I don’t care, please don’t leave._  
“There’s been a big car crash. Viv was on her way to work, now she’s got a broken leg and cracked ribs. They need me to cover her, alright?”  
“I don’t want you to go.”  
“Well, frankly I’d rather have a lazy Sunday in, too, but honestly I doubt I’d be able to relax here. You’re going to be climbing the walls without a proper case soon.”  
Sherlock thought maybe he knew what to say, to explain to John.  
“Just don’t leave. It’s boring without you.”  
John clenched his jaw, his head shifting and eyes darting as he searched for a reply.  
“Right. Yes. Because that’s what’s important, isn’t it? Well, believe it or not, I am not _actually_ responsible for keeping you amused.” He pushed past Sherlock to the bathroom.

__The rest of the day was bloody miserable. The fingertips experiment had yielded no useful information, and Sherlock let himself sink so deep into a sulk he did not realise John had misunderstood him until after his flatmate had returned from the hospital.  
“You did not understand me, this morning,” he told John once he had settled in his chair with his laptop and a cup of tea.  
“Didn’t understand what? That everyone, including you, considers me to be your babysitter?”  
“Exactly that. It’s an erroneous conclusion.”  
“Y- yes! I’m your flatmate, I’m your colleague, I’m your friend, but I really –” he sighed tersely. “I _really_ hate being your dancing monkey.”  
“Primates have nothing to do with this, John. As my companion, you _must_ know how important your presence is to me. Not just between jobs. When I say it’s boring without you, I don’t mean the waiting. I mean _everything_.”  
John blinked at Sherlock and licked his lips. He took a sip of tea and set the cup down carefully.  
“Well, fuck, Sherlock, why didn’t you say that this _morning_? Or, or yesterday?”  
The detective suspected that his friend still did not comprehend him fully. He left the living room without answering and went to bed. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologise for changing the total number of chapters. I know it's a bit of a dick move. This "chapter 3" is really just the first part of what was going to be "chapter 3", the bulk of which will now be chapter 4, so you get my drift. I'm posting this to reassure anyone who cares that this is definitely a thing that will be completed.


End file.
